The Voluntary Life

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78 Entrepreneurship Part 10: Going Into Business With Others Oct 15, 2012

Show notes

This episode is about the issue of shared ownership in business. It covers key questions that anyone considering going into business with others will face, including:

Should you go into business with others or be a sole owner-entrepreneur?
If you do go into business with others, how will you split ownership?
How will you ensure that the owners are all incentivised to add value to the business? In other words, how will you avoid the free-rider problem?
How are you going to make decisions together efficiently and avoid deadlock?
What will you do if the owners no longer want to work together, or one of them wants out?

Jake provides his own experience in facing these questions and summarises some of the options available to consider. It's up to you to decide what the best choices are for your own business. This podcast will help you make these decisions.

76 The Permanent Portfolio: Author Interview With Craig Rowland Sep 24, 2012

Show notes

This episode is an interview with Craig Rowland, who is the co-author of a new book called The Permanent Portfolio: Harry Browne's Long-Term Investment Strategy. In the episode we discuss the Permanent Portfolio strategy and many of the insights from Craig's new book. We talk about the way in which the Permanent Portfolio approach differs from other investment strategies including:

The choice of being an independent investor as opposed to entrusting your money to someone else
Achieving diversification in investing, as opposed to the Warren Buffet quote of "putting all your eggs in one basket and watching the basket very closely".
Using an asset allocation strategy based on identifying how assets react to each of the possible economic conditions, as opposed to asset allocation based on correlation studies.
The problems with trying to time the market in investing
The benefits of a passive investing approach that rebalances according to a strategy of maintaining diversification.

We also talk about some particular practical issues relating to the portfolio including

Creating your own portfolio versus using the Permanent Portfolio fund (and differences in the fund's approach to the classic PP strategy)
The growth of passive indexing strategies in stocks and how this aspect of the Permanent Portfolio approach is now more mainstream
Craig's thoughts on how best to own gold bullion and the tradeoff between convenience and safety.
How the permanent portfolio can help independent investors in the current context of artificially low interest rates and Quantitative Easing.

You can also get more information about the concept of the permanent portfolio in Harry Browne's book "Fail-Safe Investing" and in many of the previous Voluntary Life podcast episodes on investing. Neither Craig nor Jake are financial advisors or dealers of any kind and this podcast only expresses our opinions.

77 Internationalising Yourself Sep 24, 2012

Show notes

This episode discusses ways in which you can overcome the limitations of the country in which you happen to have been born and, as much as possible, live with the whole of planet earth as your homeland. The topics covered include:

Travelling and seeing the world, to help you make conscious choices about where you want to spend your life
Taking the opportunity to live abroad for extended periods of time so that you can experience life in different parts of the world
Learning another language and giving yourself different tools to think with
Internationalising some of your assets, as geo-political diversification in case of catastrophic events such as a war.
If you have the opportunity, taking advantage of the chance to obtain dual nationality to further extend your flexibility in terms of where you can work or live.

75 The Most Advanced Democracy On Earth (Probably Not What You Think) Sep 10, 2012

Show notes

This episode is about the most advanced democracy on earth. It is about the most effective system we have for letting everyone have their say, working together to change society in a non-violent way.... Oh and it's probably not what you think. Show Notes:

Ludwig Von Mises' "The Anti-capitalistic Mentality"
Churchill's quote on democracy
Karl Popper's views on democracy can be found in The Open Society and Its Enemies

74 City Air Makes You Free Sep 06, 2012

Show notes

This episode is about where you choose to live and the impact that this choice can have on your level of freedom. Many people who have written about personal and political liberty have suggested a link between where you choose to live and how free you are. In the podcast we explore 3 different ideas about this choice:

The ideas in "Walden" by Henry David Thoreau: finding freedom by living self-sufficiently alone in a rural setting
The idea of 'Galts Gulch' in "Atlas Shrugged" by Ayn Rand: finding freedom by living in a small community of like-minded people (again in a rural setting with an emphasis on self-sufficiency)
The idea that 'City Air Makes You Free' (expressed by writers such as Jane Jacobs): finding freedom in the division of labour and diversity that cities provide.

Arguably, the benefits of self-sufficiency have been overestimated in books like Walden and Atlas Shrugged, whereas the benefits of interdependence in cities have been under-appreciated by previous writers on liberty. It is suggested that Galt's Gulch wouldn't actually work in real life because it would lack the division of labour of a big city that is necessary to support the kind of advanced and specialised roles of it's inhabitants. In contrast, living in a city can provide many opportunities for greater work and personal freedom because of the benefits of the division of labour in cities. Show Notes

Origin of the phrase City Air Makes You Free
The Death and Life of Great American Cities by Jane Jacobs
Previous episode of The Voluntary Life about Atlas Shrugged by Ayn Rand

73 A Review of The Four Hour Work Week by Tim Ferriss Aug 28, 2012

Show notes

This episode is a review of the book "The 4-Hour Workweek: Escape 9-5, Live Anywhere, and Join the New Rich" by Tim Ferriss. It is a skype conversation with a group of friends. The ideas that we discuss include:

taking mini-retirements and getting out of a one-track career mentality
extended travelling
testing new entrepreneurial ideas with sales pages on the web before starting
outsourcing tasks to a virtual assistant
Tim Ferriss' personality and how it influences the style and content of the book

72 How You Can Help End Poverty Aug 20, 2012

Show notes

This episode is about how you as an individual can help alleviate poverty in a non-political, principled way. It's an economic view of how you can reduce poverty through economic development and the wealth that it generates. Jake presents ideas of the economist Ludwig Von Mises about how you can create economic progress and development, focussing on three key activities:

creating technical innovation, which helps to make everything cheaper for everyone within the economy
being an entrepreneur, which creates new value and wealth in the economy
being a saver and investor, which provides resources for the future economic development (either of your own business or that of others)

The podcast discusses how each of these activities help reduce your own poverty and that of the world as a whole. Show Notes

71 Computer Security and Privacy For Everyone Aug 15, 2012

Show notes

This episode is an interview with Kristov, an application security specialist, about what kind of measures individuals can take to ensure a level of security and privacy for their computers and their online life. In the interview, we cover security and privacy for a range of topics including:

email use
web browsing
malware and viruses
password managers
data storage
use of torrents
VOIP and chat
application security for entrepreneurs

70 Becoming Who You Are Interview Part 2 Aug 07, 2012

Show notes

The second part of the interview from the Becoming Who You Are Podcast. We talk about a whole range of topics including:

The fear of criticism that can come up when putting creative work out there
The challenges of being yourself at work
The future of The Voluntary Life podcast
The difference between abstract business planning and being conscious of what's really happening in your business now
The balance between having dreams and staying in touch with reality
Getting support from the people in your life
Doing what you love

69 Inflation: The Hidden Tax Aug 01, 2012

Show notes

This episode is an interview with Marc de Mesel, who was previously on the show talking about investing in Europe. Marc runs a blog on investing in Europe in dutch and also an investing blog in english. In this episode, Marc talks about the hidden tax that is inflation. We discuss the difference between official inflation figures and the real loss of purchasing power that ordinary people experience. We also talk about ways in which an individual investor or saver can cope with inflation, including the advantages and limitations of precious metals as an inflation hedge. The discussion is opinion only and should not be considered any kind of financial advice. For more information about the concept of the permanent portfolio mentioned in the discussion, see Harry Browne's book "Fail-Safe Investing". You can also hear more about the Permanent Portfolio concept in this previous episode.

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